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James Barnes (Earth-11584)
History "I know you can make it on your own Steve. But you don't have to...cause I'll always be here for ya, till the end of the line." James Buchanan Barnes was born on the southside of Brooklyn in 1917 to Irish immigrants. As a child, James was athletic and well-liked, but he also had a strong hatred of bullies and the like. He became close friends with another descendant of Irish immigrants, one Steve Rogers, who became almost like a younger brother to Barnes. It was Rogers who coined Barnes' famous nickname of Bucky, although originally only he was allowed to call him that. The two were inseparable in their youth, which extended into young adulthood. When Rogers' mother died of tuberculosis, Barnes offered him a place to sleep and to live, saying he only needed to perform odd jobs to earn his keep. Rogers refused, but Barnes reminded him that he was with Rogers to the end of the line. At the outbreak of World War II, both Barnes and Rogers joined hundreds of thousands of other young men in signing up to defend their country. Being near the peak of physical health, Barnes was easily chosen when he enlisted, eventually winding up assigned to the 107th Infantry Regiment headed for North Africa. By contrast, Rogers was immediately rejected due to a variety of health problems. Despite trying to help his friend find other ways to serve, Rogers continued to try and enlist using false identities. Barnes was shipped off without knowing what became of his friend for certain. In North Africa, Barnes quickly found out that the enemy they faced was far different than just the German Panzer units, as his brigade got mixed in with an overarching group assigned to the SSR under the command of General Chester Phillips. Barnes availed himself as a soldier, earning decorations for bravery in the field over the course of the next year and a half. However Barnes' luck, as well as the luck of his comrades (including a British demolitions expert named Timothy Dugan that Barnes had befriended) ran out when nearly the entire 107th was caught in an ambush in northern Italy. Barnes and his company were taken prisoner and transferred to an experimental camp thirty miles behind the German lines. There, Barnes was experimented on by Dr. Arnim Zola, subjected to a procedure in an attempt to recreate a Super Soldier Serum created by Dr. Abraham Erskine. It is highly likely Barnes would have died in the process, but instead he and the rest of his surviving platoon were rescued by Steve Rogers, now transformed into Captain America. Barnes initially didn't recognize his lifelong friend, but eventually realized it was him. Together they led the soldiers back across enemy territory to the SSR encampment. Eventually, Bucky and several other members of his squadron were re-assigned to a platoon led by Rogers known as the Howling Commandos. For the majority of the rest of the war, Barnes and Rogers led the Howling Commandos on several dangerous missions throughout Europe, taking out HYDRA bases and helping to win the war for the Allies. Barnes and Rogers spoke often of the lives they wanted for themselves after the war, with Barnes encouraging Rogers to pursue a relationship with Peggy Carter if that was what he desired. Barnes' life though would take a dramatic turn late in the war, when they were sent on a mission to capture noted HYDRA scientist Dr. Arnim Zola. Attacking a train near the Swiss Alps, the Commandos were caught in an ambush set by Zola. Barnes and the rest of the platoon managed to avail themselves of the HYDRA soldiers on the train, but in the commotion of capturing Zola there was an explosion, causing Bucky to fall off the train and go crashing to the ground below, apparently to his death. Barnes was found later by HYDRA soldiers, however, and taken to the Eastern Front away from Allied Action. Comatose but alive (though his left arm had been amputated), Barnes would be moved from place to place for over a year before he finally came to rest in the Soviet Union in the hands of the KGB. Working again with Dr. Zola in a clandestine fashion, Barnes was awoken to find himself in Soviet custody with a cybernetic arm attached, and having been subjected to a derivative version of the Super Soldier Serum created by Zola. He was subjected to several months of torture and memory wiping to give him mental programming that could be triggered with a series of keywords spoken in Russian. With his memory erased, Barnes became a robotic-like assassin for the KGB (and occasionally the remnants of HYDRA and its industrial arm AIM) that was officially known as the Winter Soldier. For the next sixty years Barnes would be kept in cryostasis until needed, awoken and given a mission as needed. One such mission took place in 1991, when Barnes was tasked with killing Howard and Maria Stark while also stealing a sample of Stark's reconstituted super soldier serum for use on five KGB operatives. Barnes then helped train five new Winter Soldiers, all of whom were put back under cryo-suspension due to being unable to be controlled. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Barnes remained on ice in the custody of HYDRA to be used as needed into the 21st century. It would not be until after the Battle of New York that the Winter Soldier's talents would be needed again, as an accessory to Project Insight, a brainchild of the newly returned HYDRA leader the Red Skull and Dr. Arnim Zola, who had been transformed into the creature MODOC. Using a Life Model Decoy of Alexander Pierce to infiltrate SHIELD, Red Skull planned to launch three Helicarriers to take out the vast majority of HYDRA's enemies all at once. When SHIELD director Nick Fury began to catch on to the plan, the Winter Soldier was dispatched to assassinate him. Barnes first assaulted the director on the streets of Washington, then shooting him with a sniper rifle while he was hiding in the apartment of his former friend Steve Rogers. The Winter Soldier fled the scene after firing the seemingly fatal round into the director, only to be intercepted by Captain America. After a brief staredown on a rooftop, Barnes disappeared till he was needed again. The Winter Soldier was eventually assigned to capture Rogers, SHIELD agent Natasha Romanoff, and their associate Sam Wilson upon their return to Washington DC after days of being on the run. Barnes fought all three of them to a standstill, nearly destroying Sam Wilson's flight suit and injuring Romanoff. However his fight with Rogers was something else entirely, with both men matching each other move for move. In the course of the battle, Barnes' mask was knocked off, revealing his identity to his former friend. When Rogers called him Bucky, it seemed to jog something in Barnes' memory, but he discarded it just as quickly and shot Rogers in the shoulder, capturing the trio and bringing them to HYDRA agents Jasper Sitwell and Brock Rumlow. However, Barnes couldn't shake the fact that he seemed to know Rogers from a previous life, as snippets of his memories began to return to him despite his mental programming. After Rogers and company's escape from HYDRA, the Winter Soldier's mind was "wiped" again and he was ordered to guard the Helicarriers prior to their launch the following day by Alexander Pierce. On the day of Project Insight's launch, Barnes was present on the third and final Helicarrier in place when Captain America, Falcon, Black Widow, Agent Maria Hill and Mockingbird all attacked the Triskellion, hoping to disable them and prevent Insight from killing millions of people at once. After taking out Falcon's flight exosuit, he confronted Rogers on the bridge of the Helicarrier and fought him to a standstill yet again. With great difficulty, Rogers managed to place the third and final tracking chip into the Helicarrier's mainframe, essentially triggering a self-destruct. He tried to jog Bucky's memory of his past self, but Barnes' confusion was evident on his face as he warred with his mental programming. Overcome, Barnes jumped from the Helicarrier into the Potomac River, seemingly to his death again. However, he survived the jump and was later seen at the Smithsonian Institute, trying to learn more about his past. Barnes avoided capture and tracking for two years following that, making his way mostly through Eastern Europe and never staying in any one place long term. In this time, he finally seemed to have come to his senses and overcome his mental programming as the Winter Soldier. He was finally tracked down by Helmut Zemo (though Zemo later denied his first encounter with Barnes) in Budapest Hungary and was triggered by his programming words to attack a UN summit in Vienna, which resulted in the death of Wakandan King T'Chaka, among others. Barnes returned to Budapest, apparently only slightly aware of his actions when his programming wore off. He was confronted by Falcon and Captain America, but shortly thereafter by a man calling himself the Black Panther. Barnes fights the Black Panther, making an escape when War Machine and Wonder Man arrive to apprehend him. A long chase through a covered highway ensued, with Barnes eventually being captured along with the now fugitive Rogers and Wilson, with the Black Panther escaping. Barnes was brought to a holding cell, where he was to be subjected to a psychologist to determine his suitability to stand trial. However the psychologist was actually Helmut Zemo in disguise, again using the programmed trigger words to learn information about the Siberian bunker where the Winter Soldier was kept. The Winter Soldier attempted to escape, only to first be confronted by Tony Stark and then by the returning Black Panther. Eventually Barnes, Rogers and Wilson made their escape, with Barnes informing the latter two that Zemo appeared to be after the other five Winter Soldiers that had been created and were still in stasis. After drafting assistance from Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man and Hawkeye, the group attempted to flee Budapest via the airport. They were intercepted by the Avengers assembled under the new Protocols signed in Vienna, consisting of Iron Man, War Machine, Black Widow, Wonder Man and Vision, along with the Black Panther (who was actually Prince T'Challa of Wakanda) and a young kid named Spider-Man. The Avengers Civil War broke out at the battle of Liszt Airport in Budapest, which eventually resulted in Barnes and Rogers' escape to Siberia to hunt down Helmut Zemo and the capture of the rest of Barnes' team (as well as the paralysis of Lt. Col James Rhodes in the War Machine suit.) Barnes and Rogers eventually made their way to Siberia, expecting to find Zemo having released the five Winter Soldiers. They were eventually joined by Tony Stark and Black Panther, both of whom had found other evidence of Zemo's involvement as well as their location from Sam Wilson. Together the four confronted Zemo, who had surprisingly killed the five Winter Soldier's while they were still in cryosleep. Instead he displayed a video of the mission in 1991 that resulted in the death of Howard and Maria Stark. Iron Man immediately attacked Barnes, despite Captain America's protestations of Barnes' brainwashing. The two friends fought against Stark in the Siberian Bunker, and after a hard fought battle eventually defeated him, though Barnes' mechanized arm was torn off in the process (and Captain America relinquished his shield and identity.) Together, Barnes and Rogers left Siberia and went back into hiding. Barnes would be allowed to travel to the secretly advanced country of Wakanda, where Prince T'Challa offered to grant him asylum and healing of the mental brainwashing he had suffered at the hands of HYDRA, temporarily putting him in cryostasis until this could be achieved. Eventually, T'Challa's sister Shuri succeeded in repairing most of Barnes' mental instability, and Barnes was allowed to live in Wakanda as a simple farmer, eager to find peace after decades of war. However, a pending disaster seems to have brought Barnes back into conflict, as Shuri and T'Challa have asked that the "White Wolf" answer the call of battle once more. Powers & Abilities * Super Soldier Serum: After Barnes second capture by HYDRA (and subsequently being transferred to the forerunner of the KGB in the aftermath of the war), Barnes was subjected to a derivative version of the Super Soldier Serum created from the notes of Dr. Erskine by Dr. Arnim Zola. This gave him similar abilities and strengths to Steve Rogers, aka Captain America. * Cybernetic Arm: In the course of his capture his left arm had to be amputed to prevent infection. To replace this, Barnes was outfitted with a cybernetic prothesis that granted him several times the strength of a normal human using the same arm (even without taking the serum's effects into consideration). The arm was also incredibly durable. * Long Range Marksmanship: From both his time as an Army sergeant and as a HYDRA assassin, Barnes showed great adeptness with firearms, particularly with long range weaponry such as sniper rifles. Weaknesses Barnes' greatest weakness is his mental conditioning from HYDRA and the KGB. Certain trigger words in the right order could keep his conscious mind in check and revert him to a type of base programming where he could be ordered to perform certain missions or deliver information. He was also subject to cryogenic freezing for a number of years, which caused his memories to "reset" everytime he was sent under. His time in Wakanda appears to have cured this mental programming, however he no longer possesses his bionic arm and has acquired a desire for pacifism in the process, possibly decreasing his effectiveness as a fighter. Film Details Barnes appears in the following films within the Earth-11584 continuity. In all cases he is portrayed by actor Sebastian Stan. * Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) * Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) * Avengers: Age of Ultron only (2015) * Captain America: Civil War (2016) * Black Panther (2018) Category:Earth-11584 Category:Earth-11584 Characters Category:Good Characters